Different Types Of Smart Glasses

By Author: helo hon
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The idea of smart glasses has been around for decades, but the technology is finally catching up. The best smart glasses can entertain, guide us with directions, help us document our lives, and even teach us about the world around us, but the category is incredibly varied, and not all smart glasses have the same features. A computer you wear on your face has obvious potential, not least because it leaves your hands free.

As a new wave of smart glasses arrives, we got sneak-peek demos of several and tested just about everything on the market. Before diving into recommendations, I’ll explain what you need to know about this category and give a quick history lesson about the space. There's some overlap with virtual reality, but we have a separate guide on the Best Virtual Reality Headsets.

Updated June 2025: We added the Xreal One Pro and Sightful Spacetop, mention of Viture’s new gamepad, an honorable mention for Lucyd Reebok Octane, and a new Avoid section with smart glasses from Asus and Solos.

The Different Types of Smart Glasses
Smart glasses are wearable computers shaped like regular glasses, ...
... though they're often chunkier to accommodate their technology. Not every pair of smart glasses is the same, as they can support wildly different functionality. Many can accommodate optical prescriptions, though they may require an additional tiny pair of lenses you wear inside the smart glasses. Some have diopter dials so you can adjust the focus separately for each eye.

Some smart glasses are as simple as electrochromic (automatically darkening) sunglasses. They may not have other tech in them, but you may see them marketed as “smart glasses.”

The most basic type of smart glasses you'll find are ones that act like portable screens. These often have displays or projectors to create a screen only the wearer can see, a series of floating windows, or a kind of heads-up display (HUD) layered on top of reality. Most include speakers for audio and simply plug into the USB-C port on your phone or laptop to mirror the screen.

The most popular type of smart glasses are ones with a camera so you can share hands-free video and audio on social media. These typically also have microphones so you can issue voice commands or ask questions of an AI assistant. The built-in camera means the AI assistant may also be able to see what you see and help with translations or directions.

Image may contain Accessories and Glasses
Google's Android XR glasses. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
At the top end of the spectrum are AR smart glasses, sometimes described as XR glasses. XR (extended reality) is an umbrella term covering VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality). While some smart glasses only offer audio and cameras, XR glasses almost always have a screen component, though it can range from a small, low-resolution HUD to one or more large, high-resolution floating displays. Features can range from layering translations of the person in front of you over the lens to showing exactly which way to go in the real world when navigating. There's often an AI component, where you can ask the glasses about the things you're looking at.